As someone with a PhD... yes. It was good for me and my career plans... but I actively tell people NOT to pursue one in this job/funding climate. I know quite a few people who basically have no aspirations past the PhD, and hence no real drive or quality of work.
It's sad really, because I know so many PhDs who are doing great stuff, but at this level it's also just so hard to separate the wheat from the chaff in terms of quality.
Lol. Yes the answer is no. I realized too late that salaries in the computer industry follow the "reverse hockey stick". Even badly trained programmers do pretty well and if you spend those early years before you get married with kids collecting a good salary you'll be in a better position then the guy that spent 7 years racking up student loan debt to get a phd.
Now if you love research - go for it. Otherwise get a job early and make money. Frankly there are a lot of fun things to do in CS without the need fora phd. Honestly spending time fishing for money to do research is probably a lot less fun then spending your time at a start up or just working.
I was hoping to provide something more nuanced with the website. For that, you could see my corresponding Twitter account: https://twitter.com/shouldyougetphd
I'm honestly surprised to all the comments in here. This is not my experience at all. I thought I may share my perspective.
I'm currently pursuing a PhD program here in France. This is a special kind of PhD, called "CIFRE" which roughly means "PhD in a company". You're employed for 3 years by both an academic lab/uni and a company. The goal is to solve an industrial research problem that benefits both the lab and the company.
Personally I'm very happy to be doing this kind of thesis. I'm not in a major lab, so I'm pretty sure I won't be able to fight much against Ivy League PhDs but I'm still getting the degree and I'm okay with it. In the future I don't seek to teach a lot but to do mostly research.
Besides having a good relationship with my advisors I'm also super happy that I don't have a student debt (French education is mostly free -- even for top engineering schools). The pay is good, not as much as an engineer but plenty of people with lower degrees would already be happy with it, so no reason to complain. With this company-linked PhD I also get to study 100% while being officially employed as an engineer, it's on my contract. If I ever want to hide the PhD from my resume (I'm sure I never will), I can basically write "I've been a research engineer for three years" and this would be the truth.
I also get to see how it works in the industrial world and to be more aware when, after the degree, I have to choose between going back to the engineer path or getting further into the academic road.
Someone help me... I am applying for CS Ph.D. programs right now. I've been in industry for a few years and I have become a skilled programmer but I never get to work on really interesting problems. I am sick of wiring up buttons and sitting in UI design meetings. The kind of problems I want to work on require a lot of heavy math/algorithms that I don't know like Control Theory and Machine Learning. I have learned a lot from listening to online courses but I never actually do the projects/homework because my boring day job programming makes me too burnt out on programming to dedicate a lot of time to side projects. I want to get the Ph.D. to become a highly skilled expert R&D engineer so I can go back to industry and do the most interesting jobs instead of the menial ones. Should I do it? (of course I'm going to finish my applications, I can always say no, but seems like people in this thread would have useful input...)
I'm actually going to suggest yes to you. OR at least you should start one. I, like you, cannot self-learn outside of work because my brain is done and needs to recharge. I, like you, read plenty and do the courses, but don't actually do the problems.
The real solution to your problem is to get another job. And I will disagree with some of the other posters that a PhD is required for ML because that is not necessarily true. I have a BS/MS in applied math and do research into how to apply ML into engineering automation problems for a fortune 50 manufacturing/eng company. Granted, we are not pushing the bounds of ML research. But we are looking at unsolved problems and using ML, control theory, robotics, etc to solve them.
This is what you want. And yes it is very math/algorithms heavy. Whenever we try to hire more people, HR sends us tons of BS cs guys that are sorely lacking the math background. Most of our hires are engineers (mech/ee/comp/aero) or oddballs with math/physics/ computational science like me.
So you can certainly look for other jobs (and if you want I will look at a resume to give more specific feedback). But if you already know that you don't have the background for controls and ML.. then go get it!
Here's the thing with CS or compEng PhDs. You don't have to finish them to get tons of valuable knowledge and move into the 'cool jobs' out there. But (per the rest of this HN thread) if you happen to get an awesome advisor and team relationship then you might as well finish.
This is a great time to get a PhD to work on problems in machine learning and machine perception, especially if you want to go into industry. There is a lot of demand. I finished my PhD about two years ago, and I do R&D at NASA in machine learning and computer vision (although I'm leaving to become a professor).
Once you are in a PhD program, be upfront with your advisor about this goal and you will likely have an easier time graduating than those students that claim they want to become professors. Typically, to get a PhD you just need to finish your coursework (fairly easy) and produce about three published papers (can be brutally hard or fairly straightforward depending on a ton of factors). The latter's ease also depends on your tolerance for disappointment, because the rewards and successes in research are somewhat sparse.
A lot of the problems people have with the PhD is that there aren't enough academic jobs. You aren't seeking one, so you will be fine as long as you focus on your goal and maintain a good work-life balance most of the time throughout school (this can be very challenging to do, in practice).
I would suggest that you follow some of work done in conferences related to the field that you are interested in. See what topics are currently being tackled and see if you can come up with initial hypothesis on the road to a solution.
A PhD usually requires you to come out of "code-it-up" mode. You clearly have to state a sufficiently scoped problem, why it hasn't been solved before and why your solution can claim to solve it.
If you are looking for more interesting jobs, it is easier just to switch companies. Many RnD companies don't exclusively hire PhD candidates. All the best :)
I think it was Yann LeCun who said on a Reddit AMA that if you want to go into Machine Learning, a PhD is very much mandatory.
I'm doing a PhD myself right now in Machine Learning / Deep Learning. I started half a year ago. I don't have any bad experience yet. But I haven't heard too much bad things at all in Germany. My chair: http://www-i6.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/
I've been through it all - from qualifying exams, to candidacy, to defense, to postdoc. To me, these sorts of articles are comparable to "join the army and see the world" propaganda. You never hear about legs blown off, brains addled, suicides, shrapnel, shellshock, and other likely outcomes.
But the PhD experience is so varied that it's not really the fault of the interviewees/authors! They probably really did have it this good! There is also survivorship bias. And people who have the grit to finish a PhD probably don't want to openly admit weakness on the Internet or, more likely, burn bridges (it's hard to be anonymous about this sort of stuff). Even after they finish the PhD, they still have to worship the ground of their overlords to keep those letters of recommendation flowin'. So we have mostly these rosy happy "learn you a PhD" stories. Not good.
I know you are out there: Young, highly motivated, highly intelligent, unbeatable willpower. You need to know just how bad it can be. You're not getting the whole story.
I'm not talking about "oh no, I might not finish" or "oh gee, maybe it will take me eight years but I'll try real hard and get through." I'm talking real life risks to your mental and physical health, destruction of relationships, opportunity cost, and (potentially) the vaporization of that awesome scientific career that you spent over a decade building because the one person in charge of you with no oversight decided they didn't like you.
I've seen so many amazing, kind, bright, talented, hard-working people exploited for years on end only to be thrown out into the academic garbage can. But the stakes go far beyond academia - what will you do about the panic attacks that continue for years, and years, and years after you finish? How about the insomnia and screaming nightmares? I bet that at least one of your fellow students will wind up in a psychiatric hospital. It could be you.
"Oh come on now," you say. "It's just science! What's so scary about a math problem or writing a few paragraphs. You're either a marshmallow, you're overreacting, or maybe you just didn't have what it takes." The science is the easy part. The hard work is the easy part. It's the people who will rule over you, the people who can (and do) ruin you. These articles always talk about a benevolent best-chum advisor/faculty that you have long conversations with and then go have another cup of tea with. But you never hear about that one narcissist/psychopath on your committee that has done everything in his power to get you out of the program, the micromanager, the manipulator, the grotesque exploitation.
In PhD land, you are at the complete mercy of a very small collection of merciless people who know that you exist to be exploited, and they know that they have you right where they want you. You better hope that those people are benevolent or neutral. In the case of many people I know, this was not the case.
When people write articles about "choosing an advisor" and "how will I know he/she is the one for me," they make it sound like a decision about whether to get a puppy or a kitten. Consider this scenario: You open a dialogue with someone whose work you have studied for years, they offer you a position in their lab, you quit your job and drag your family halfway across the US for this "golden opportunity", and then you find out that this person is by far the biggest jerk that you have ever met and you cannot work with them. What do you do then? Where do you put all of that expertise that you acquired? I've seen this happen over and over again: You start from scratch - time to grind and level up all over again, but now you're not so sure you're good at the thing you're doing - you could be terrible at it.
I could go on and on. Maybe I will someday.
Well, hopefully this will inspire a little more well-rounded picture of what else it can be like to go through with a PhD.
I want to add to this post - in my experience, a crappy PhD project with a great advisor is orders of magnitude better than a great PhD project with a shitty advisor.
A shitty advisor will make your life horrific - will pile a toxic combination of guilt, uncertainty, with just the right amount of compliments to make you keep going while hating your life. I've seen many brilliant colleagues completely burn themselves out because of this.
I've had an excellent advisor both for my PhD and later my postdoc - and while I've had strong disagreements with both, they are now excellent friends and people who I really cherish.
Before you accept a PhD in a lab, talk to your advisor's students privately, and ideally also to her ex students.
> I'm talking real life risks to your mental and physical health, destruction of relationships, opportunity cost, and (potentially) the vaporization of that awesome scientific career that you spent over a decade building because the one person in charge of you with no oversight decided they didn't like you.
This person's rant describes my experience reasonably well. Insomnia? Check. Neutral-at-best advising relationship? Check. Declining general health due to overwork and stress? Check. Narcissist/psychopath on my committee? Check. Know somebody who ended up in a psychiatric hospital? Check.
Check. Check. Check.
Edit: I was in a top-5 science/engineering PhD program.
Thanks for posting this. I don't think your experience is uncommon. I have actually worked in two separate academic labs and both of the PIs exhibited some sort of sociopathic behavior (lacked empathy, were extremely self-centered, set forth incredibly unreasonable expectations, etc.). I've tried to convince myself that they simply lack good managerial skills but I think something else is afoot. The academic system and funding climate breeds and selects for these sorts of egotistical investigators. They have to work extremely hard to sell their work to funding agencies that are tightening their belts to begin with against a flood of newly minted PhDs/post-docs that have sunk nearly a decade into their own education just to catch the slightest break. It would make sense then that the only types of people who would follow this carrot-on-a-stick model are those who have thoroughly convinced themselves that they are better than all of the others and should be the recipient of all research funding in their field. Couple this with the fact that nobody gets funding for having humility or admitting that they are wrong and you end up with cut throat competition where salesmanship is valued over the skills of a good scientist or student mentor. Not to mention the bias a bright undergrad gets from a professor on whether or not to pursue graduate study.
I'm not surprised you and I have had negative experiences in academia pursuing an advanced degree. I agree that the politics of it all prevent some of the more unfortunate stories from surfacing because who doesn't need another letter of recommendation or reference these days. It's not hard to find the culture of exploitation in academia. I'd really like to know the numbers on what grad school drop outs go on to do. Even more interesting would be how they're doing in the mental health department.
On a more positive note, I appreciate this article for being a collection of advice for someone considering getting a PhD. More resources like this should be made available to young undergrads still on the educational conveyor belt.
Countering your counter-point: this seems like the most pessimistic comment about doing a PhD I've ever seen. There are many types of department, many fields, that don't operate like the type of setup you are describing. I'd be damn surprised if anyone in my department is waking up with "screaming nightmares" or is "on their way to the psychiatric hospital" - though maybe I'm just ignorant about my peers, or got a lucky roll of the dice.
I'm not saying this doesn't happen, or trying to diminish your personal experience, but you've presented your dark scenario as being as inevitable as the happy scenario you are railing against.
At first I was thinking you are doing an excessive amount of fear mongering but then I read this sentence
"I bet that at least one of your fellow students will wind up in a psychiatric hospital."
I knew two students in my Ph.D. program in math who ended up in a psychiatric ward.
Full disclosure, I'm ABD in math and quit because I saw no future as a math professor at a research institution. In retrospect my advisor was not a good fit for me either. I wish I had left the program earlier than I did the opportunity cost was indeed quite high.
Amen. Having gone through -the process- intact, relatively speaking, I've had the pleasure of the misfortune to experience everything mentioned first or second hand.
Two close friends that weren't so lucky, now six years later still circling the drains on the psyche ward.
Another close one that gave up literally two weeks before dissertation time never to return, now years later still oscillating between relief and regret daily.
I had it easy with a return tick trip from the normal institution to the mental one, mixed with two periodic strong bouts of insomnia and a thankfully short period where a bottle of crimson red before lunch got the engine going.
Tons of things to add but indeed, it's hard to be anonymous about this sort of stuff.
Several years later I'm still in the state of "glad to have gone through it, yet had I known in advance what it would entail there's not a single chance in hell I'd accept.".
Before you project your anecdot as a massive generalization of all PHD programs, consider the fact that at least in computer science, there are VERY happy PHDs working at Google, Twitter, FB and others who are glad to have an expertise in fields like machine learning, NLP, IR and computer vision which otherwise would be difficult to attain. Many of these people in fact got hired at these companies because of their PHD degree. In fact, just about few years ago Google had reputation of sweeping clean pretty much all CS PhDs from top 50 schools IIRC. So getting PHD in fields like CS is definitely not a waste of time. Now sure you can end up with bad advisor but that's where you are supposed to do your homework ie background checks on professors and consult former students on their experience. The process of choosing advisor is very critical, you need to find your cultural fit and you need to have very strong intersection on research areas. If you don't have a lot of choice then you are likely underqualified and you would end up choosing something suboptimal that is destined to make you unhappy. Perhaps you were better off just looking for real job in that case instead of insisting on PHD degree. Either way I don't see why your experience with your advisor should be a reason to universally downgrade all PHD programs out there.
So how is this really different from getting a job? On the job you would also have a manager who has exactly same position and powers you attribute to adviser. You are probably moving across US to get some job X, just to find a manager who is jerk and being a new person you probably have less credibility and mobility. Sure, changing jobs are easy but nevertheless you can't do that endlessly. I guess only big advantage I see is that you probably get paid more, although I doubt fair because you would be considered fresh out of college anyway. In return, you probably have much more higher stress and tight definitive schedules.
So if your choices comes down to getting a job in industry vs doing PHD - there are few advantages for sure but everything you have described seems to apply to both options more or less.
This is a really excellent summary. I'd like to add though, that the 'people stuff' you mention - which I think you are spot on about - continues after the PhD; and furthermore it is a fact of life in nearly every other mildly competitive sphere you might decide to participate in, in nearly any area of personal or professional life.
One of the most important lessons I learned was how to spot different kinds of pathological personalities from a distance.
This is a really, really painful - but invaluable - skill to acquire and I am firmly convinced it can only be learned through the school of hardest-knocks.
Not got a PhD here, though I do work in academia, so I am surrounded by them.
While I wouldn't recommend it unless you are really into your field of study (basically I see academia like a ponzi scheme at the moment with far more PhD's than future PI positions). I would say that describing it as having "real risks to your mental and physical health" is a bit over the top. Sure anyone can take their job so seriously that they are stressed out and are damaging their health, but that's not a requirement of doing a PhD and not specific to it either. Plenty of PhDs seem to take things easy around here and most seem to have a decent life until the last year when they have to knuckle down.
Although this isn't the same in all disciplines, in those that have significant fieldwork components, graduate school can offer some amazing experiences for young people that are difficult (though certainly not impossible) to get elsewhere.
I did my MS and PhD in geology/geophysics and did a good amount of fieldwork, including 8 international field campaigns in places like the Lesser Antilles and Tibet. It's a cool experience to be 23 and send to Nicaragua with a ton of scientific equipment and run small team for a month or two. There are aspects of it that are like tourism, but you go off the backpacker circuit more and interact with the locals, and actually have inescapable intellectual challenges and responsibilities. It's also a bit less heavy than the Peace Corps.
This is pretty common in the earth sciences, although not required. Lots of people in the social sciences have analogous opportunities.
In any case, I think that the overall discussion in the article and in the comments here provide a good range of possible experiences and considerations. But I just wanted to add my piece because it hasn't been mentioned, and it was what really tipped the scales on going to grad school for me. And that was, for me, a great decision.
I'd also add that anyone with an interest in both earth science and coding will find that if they really learn the 'earth' part of the sciences, there are very many opportunities to use relatively simple computations to make advances that a lot of the field scientists haven't worked through yet, and lots of industry opportunities if you're into that as well.
The most important advice I tell people who are thinking about getting a PhD is that they have to be really really motivated. 100% of the PhD students have at least one moment during their PhD work that they are seriously considering quitting. And this can happen at any point during the period, ranging from after one year, until year four.
If you are motivated, it is one hell of an experience that you are very unlikely to get anywhere else. This of course depends highly on the group you are joining and the research field that you are going to be in. It is very likely that you get to travel the world and meet interesting new people.
But it is no picknick, and I can confirm some of the other horror stories that you read here. Then again, these made me a better, more focused person.
You should get a PhD if you want, and you should see it for what it is: a job, with an end date and a certification. Many of you here act as if the PhD was a life-forming experience that defines your life. It's just one of the many things that can define your life.
In my experience the academic world is a closed society of people with similar, often pointless anxieties, an interesting, but quite uniform culture, and often a vague connection with the rest of the universe. I mean, things like publishing, impact factors, tenures and ego-bashing, are things that do not matter in the end, only the science matters, yet many academics' life incessantly revolves around it.
Another place where i have seen a similar "closed world" is the army. People there obsess over mindless pointless things all the time.
I think you should get a PhD because the world is getting richer and you can afford to do this, but make it about learning rather than anything else. If you dont build huge bridges in academia, who cares, you can always join a day job or start your own business. These are exciting times.
If a Ph.D is not a life-forming experience then you have not done a Ph.D. You might have been enrolled in a course and handed in a thesis, but unless you are changed by it you have missed the point.
These are really solid interviews. For those considering a PhD, I would also recommend "Getting What You Came For"[1]. When my mother was considering getting her PhD, I bought it for her -- and also read it myself as someone who aspired to get a PhD. My mom loved the book (and did indeed get her PhD, a requirement in her field), but the book inspired me to consider non-PhD options. Once I started exploring those options, it was clear that they were a better fit for me -- and I have never felt the desire to return for a PhD. (Though given my genetic predisposition to late-in-life PhDs -- my grandfather, mother and aunt all earned their PhDs after the age of 50 -- I suppose I should say only that I haven't felt the desire yet.)
You should get a Ph.D if you want to change who you are. Doing a Ph.D gave me the strength to take chances that I would never have risked unless I had a Ph.D. It gave me confidence in my ideas and that if I single handly focused on something I can do it. This has proven to be very valuable.
I also had some of the best times of my life as Ph.D student (and also some of the worst), but it is not something I have regretted doing for one second since.
I finished my PhD about 6 months ago, at the age of 44, married and with three children. It took me 11 years, and cost an enormous amount of money. Before I started, I was an independent consultant. After finishing, I'm an independent consultant. I never planned to go into academia.
So, why did I do a PhD? I was told that I would learn lots of new things, and meet lots of new people -- and escape, to some degree, the frustration that I was experiencing with my consulting business.
It's true that I met lots new people. And it's true that I learned a ton. And I'm very proud of the research that I did, resulting in a Web site that is used by thousands of researchers and students every week. (The Modeling Commons -- http://modelingcommons.org/, if you're curious.) And I also go to experience a different sort of frustration than I have had when consulting.
And yet, was it worthwhile? I continue to wrestle with that question. My family and I were hugely stressed for more than a decade. Our finances are improving (thanks to my consulting work), but it'll be another year or so before we're back to where we were. I'm frustrated that I didn't create lots of products and businesses during those 11 years.
And the incredible frustration of the PhD process, and of having an advisor who drove me completely and utterly batty, cannot be ignored.
If you want to do research, then you should do a PhD -- but you should know what you're getting into beforehand, and be really sure that you want to do research.
If you don't want to do research, but want to boost your creds, and if you're single and young, then it might be worthwhile.
If you're like me, in your mid-30s, married, with children, and the primary breadwinner, then you should think long and hard about whether you want the PhD. Several of the others who did PhDs mid-career in my program had spouses earning good incomes, didn't have children, or both.
I do believe that having the PhD has already helped to boost my career a bit, helping me to find newer and bigger clients who somehow think that having a PhD makes you smarter or better than the rest of the population.
But would I recommend it to someone else in my position? Not without a lot of thought and consideration. And an understanding that what you think will take 5 years or so might take much longer than that.
If you're really unsure, try out a masters. It can actually be helpful in the job market and you get a couple extra years of advanced coursework and projects. In my experience getting a PhD is more about doing something for yourself, comparable to running a marathon for example. Where many can find joy in a simple jog but it can be difficult to explain why it is more "fun" at mile 20 than mile 2. PhDs certainly aren't about making money, or getting famous, or having a rich social life and thus aren't for a lot of people.
Being a startup forum I'm surprised no one has compared doing a PhD to starting a startup. Has anyone done both and if so are they similar in stress levels, willpower needed etc? What are the similarities and differences?
I spent 6 years working on a PhD before dropping it and going off and co-founding a start-up - from '89 to '95.
I wasn't terribly highly motivated about the PhD work towards the end - the main thing I learned during the process was that I did not want to work in academia. I didn't see much point in a PhD as a general purpose credential and basically used my time for the last 18 months or so getting our company sorted out.
Having said that, academia - particularly post-grads, is a great place to meet people. I met my co-founder through a research project and a couple of other people I knew from there came on-board as early stage employees and worked out really well.
Startup is more rewarding, you steer it where you want, and reap the rewards. In science, even if you make the big discovery you have a shit ton of politics to go through yet. (source: after building an indie business, i took up a pHd in a (very interesting) field). I love what i learned and will run away from academia as soon as i get the PhD. I don't understand how super smart people allow themselves to be treated the way they are treated there sometimes.
Startups and PhDs do tend to attract intellectually curious people. The startup scene seems to be benefiting from the brain-drain away from academia due to push and pull factors.
But there are some differences:
A startup involves working in a team; for a PhD, you're mostly on your own.
A startup has no guarantee of success; for a PhD, there is an institutional bias in getting you through.
Lots of interesting comments here. My biggest bit of advice to someone asking if he or she should get a PhD is to phrase it differently.
If that person got into an elite Medical, Law, or Business School, they should ask "should I get an MD, JD, or MBA". The reason it's ok to phrase it this way is that attrition rates are typically below one half of one percent in those degree programs at the elite (top 10) level.
Science PhD programs, even elite ones, often have attrition rates at 50%. Engineering is a bit better, at around 35% attrition rates, though this varies by program.
So you should be saying "should I take a 50% shot at getting a PhD" - or, if not, take a very objective look at why the 50% doesn't apply to you. I know, if you got into the PhD program at Berkeley, you justifiably think you're really good at this sort of thing, but really, everyone's good. The 50% who drop or fail out aren't slackers or unintelligent. They're often exceptionally smart and motivated people.
These degrees are very different from professional degrees at the elite level. They are extraordinarily difficult to complete.
On a personal note, I was a PhD student in Industrial Engineering at Berkeley, and I felt there was far too much failure and attrition for such a bright and accomplished group of people. Nobody I knew ended up in an insane asylum (as mentioned in other posts), but it was an emotionally rough experience for many of them, and I could see it getting there. I felt the system did border on being cruel at times.
A question for those who got their PhDs -- do you think there is a difference between getting one in a European Uni versus getting one in the USA? I've known a few science PhDs in the UK that seemed to be quite content in their decision, while the people that seem to have a bad time tend to do theirs in the USA (speculation in general, not just from the comments in this thread). Would this be an accurate assessment or does the location of your institution not really matter?
The big difference is the UK uni's are in a big rush to get you in and out in 3 years. I have seen people from the UK with Ph.Ds that are really just a master thesis.
Edit. Australian degrees are about half way in between the UK and US system. Most candidates take around 4 years.
They should have more interviews with people who chose not to go for a PhD, and whether they feel they were successful in spite of (or because of) that choice.
I* believe that implicit in the curriculum of a doctoral program is the education on how to take on any question or problem and contribute to it. I'm not a computer scientist but do a lot programming and work with many people with a CS education. Many have an incredible ability to architect a solution to a problem by breaking it down into straightforward operations. A PhD is like that, but for questions and bigger problems. If you want to build something that other people haven't built before, or answer a question that nobody else has answered before, a PhD will give you great confidence and experience in doing that. It is incredibly enabling and will change how you approach problems for the rest of your life.
However, you also learn why nobody has done it before: because those things take a lot of time. And in a PhD program time is not a limited resource, money is. You will be doing stuff that is a waste of time by any objective measure. You have to be very mindful of the time cost of tasks, work, and your choices, because nobody else is. If you're not careful, a very meaningful period of time will have gone by without a lot to show for.
My advice for people who ask me about getting a PhD is that it is risky entering a PhD program without certainty in what you want to do. You can go to college and figure out what to do. But in a doctoral program, you are too likely to get lost in the system, have a bad experience, waste too much time, and accrue too much opportunity cost. You will regret it if that happens.
_______
*PhD in a Physics/Engineering program and research work in neuroscience and medicine. My one reccurring nightmare in life is waking up certain that I'm missing a credit, signature, or form and I'm still in graduate school.
Any advice for someone who is about to finish a PhD in CS? Like pro/cons of doing a postdoc vs. going straight to the industry, or best way to migrate to the industry?
[+] [-] marknutter|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pbnjay|11 years ago|reply
It's sad really, because I know so many PhDs who are doing great stuff, but at this level it's also just so hard to separate the wheat from the chaff in terms of quality.
[+] [-] ascotan|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] emplynx|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tych0|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AndrewKemendo|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mdup|11 years ago|reply
I'm currently pursuing a PhD program here in France. This is a special kind of PhD, called "CIFRE" which roughly means "PhD in a company". You're employed for 3 years by both an academic lab/uni and a company. The goal is to solve an industrial research problem that benefits both the lab and the company.
Personally I'm very happy to be doing this kind of thesis. I'm not in a major lab, so I'm pretty sure I won't be able to fight much against Ivy League PhDs but I'm still getting the degree and I'm okay with it. In the future I don't seek to teach a lot but to do mostly research.
Besides having a good relationship with my advisors I'm also super happy that I don't have a student debt (French education is mostly free -- even for top engineering schools). The pay is good, not as much as an engineer but plenty of people with lower degrees would already be happy with it, so no reason to complain. With this company-linked PhD I also get to study 100% while being officially employed as an engineer, it's on my contract. If I ever want to hide the PhD from my resume (I'm sure I never will), I can basically write "I've been a research engineer for three years" and this would be the truth.
I also get to see how it works in the industrial world and to be more aware when, after the degree, I have to choose between going back to the engineer path or getting further into the academic road.
[+] [-] blt|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brational|11 years ago|reply
The real solution to your problem is to get another job. And I will disagree with some of the other posters that a PhD is required for ML because that is not necessarily true. I have a BS/MS in applied math and do research into how to apply ML into engineering automation problems for a fortune 50 manufacturing/eng company. Granted, we are not pushing the bounds of ML research. But we are looking at unsolved problems and using ML, control theory, robotics, etc to solve them.
This is what you want. And yes it is very math/algorithms heavy. Whenever we try to hire more people, HR sends us tons of BS cs guys that are sorely lacking the math background. Most of our hires are engineers (mech/ee/comp/aero) or oddballs with math/physics/ computational science like me.
So you can certainly look for other jobs (and if you want I will look at a resume to give more specific feedback). But if you already know that you don't have the background for controls and ML.. then go get it!
Here's the thing with CS or compEng PhDs. You don't have to finish them to get tons of valuable knowledge and move into the 'cool jobs' out there. But (per the rest of this HN thread) if you happen to get an awesome advisor and team relationship then you might as well finish.
[+] [-] chriskanan|11 years ago|reply
Once you are in a PhD program, be upfront with your advisor about this goal and you will likely have an easier time graduating than those students that claim they want to become professors. Typically, to get a PhD you just need to finish your coursework (fairly easy) and produce about three published papers (can be brutally hard or fairly straightforward depending on a ton of factors). The latter's ease also depends on your tolerance for disappointment, because the rewards and successes in research are somewhat sparse.
A lot of the problems people have with the PhD is that there aren't enough academic jobs. You aren't seeking one, so you will be fine as long as you focus on your goal and maintain a good work-life balance most of the time throughout school (this can be very challenging to do, in practice).
[+] [-] currywurst|11 years ago|reply
A PhD usually requires you to come out of "code-it-up" mode. You clearly have to state a sufficiently scoped problem, why it hasn't been solved before and why your solution can claim to solve it.
If you are looking for more interesting jobs, it is easier just to switch companies. Many RnD companies don't exclusively hire PhD candidates. All the best :)
[+] [-] albertzeyer|11 years ago|reply
I'm doing a PhD myself right now in Machine Learning / Deep Learning. I started half a year ago. I don't have any bad experience yet. But I haven't heard too much bad things at all in Germany. My chair: http://www-i6.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/
[+] [-] harveywi|11 years ago|reply
But the PhD experience is so varied that it's not really the fault of the interviewees/authors! They probably really did have it this good! There is also survivorship bias. And people who have the grit to finish a PhD probably don't want to openly admit weakness on the Internet or, more likely, burn bridges (it's hard to be anonymous about this sort of stuff). Even after they finish the PhD, they still have to worship the ground of their overlords to keep those letters of recommendation flowin'. So we have mostly these rosy happy "learn you a PhD" stories. Not good.
I know you are out there: Young, highly motivated, highly intelligent, unbeatable willpower. You need to know just how bad it can be. You're not getting the whole story.
I'm not talking about "oh no, I might not finish" or "oh gee, maybe it will take me eight years but I'll try real hard and get through." I'm talking real life risks to your mental and physical health, destruction of relationships, opportunity cost, and (potentially) the vaporization of that awesome scientific career that you spent over a decade building because the one person in charge of you with no oversight decided they didn't like you.
I've seen so many amazing, kind, bright, talented, hard-working people exploited for years on end only to be thrown out into the academic garbage can. But the stakes go far beyond academia - what will you do about the panic attacks that continue for years, and years, and years after you finish? How about the insomnia and screaming nightmares? I bet that at least one of your fellow students will wind up in a psychiatric hospital. It could be you.
"Oh come on now," you say. "It's just science! What's so scary about a math problem or writing a few paragraphs. You're either a marshmallow, you're overreacting, or maybe you just didn't have what it takes." The science is the easy part. The hard work is the easy part. It's the people who will rule over you, the people who can (and do) ruin you. These articles always talk about a benevolent best-chum advisor/faculty that you have long conversations with and then go have another cup of tea with. But you never hear about that one narcissist/psychopath on your committee that has done everything in his power to get you out of the program, the micromanager, the manipulator, the grotesque exploitation.
In PhD land, you are at the complete mercy of a very small collection of merciless people who know that you exist to be exploited, and they know that they have you right where they want you. You better hope that those people are benevolent or neutral. In the case of many people I know, this was not the case.
When people write articles about "choosing an advisor" and "how will I know he/she is the one for me," they make it sound like a decision about whether to get a puppy or a kitten. Consider this scenario: You open a dialogue with someone whose work you have studied for years, they offer you a position in their lab, you quit your job and drag your family halfway across the US for this "golden opportunity", and then you find out that this person is by far the biggest jerk that you have ever met and you cannot work with them. What do you do then? Where do you put all of that expertise that you acquired? I've seen this happen over and over again: You start from scratch - time to grind and level up all over again, but now you're not so sure you're good at the thing you're doing - you could be terrible at it.
I could go on and on. Maybe I will someday.
Well, hopefully this will inspire a little more well-rounded picture of what else it can be like to go through with a PhD.
[+] [-] Fede_V|11 years ago|reply
A shitty advisor will make your life horrific - will pile a toxic combination of guilt, uncertainty, with just the right amount of compliments to make you keep going while hating your life. I've seen many brilliant colleagues completely burn themselves out because of this.
I've had an excellent advisor both for my PhD and later my postdoc - and while I've had strong disagreements with both, they are now excellent friends and people who I really cherish.
Before you accept a PhD in a lab, talk to your advisor's students privately, and ideally also to her ex students.
[+] [-] jurassic|11 years ago|reply
This person's rant describes my experience reasonably well. Insomnia? Check. Neutral-at-best advising relationship? Check. Declining general health due to overwork and stress? Check. Narcissist/psychopath on my committee? Check. Know somebody who ended up in a psychiatric hospital? Check.
Check. Check. Check.
Edit: I was in a top-5 science/engineering PhD program.
[+] [-] nycthbris|11 years ago|reply
I'm not surprised you and I have had negative experiences in academia pursuing an advanced degree. I agree that the politics of it all prevent some of the more unfortunate stories from surfacing because who doesn't need another letter of recommendation or reference these days. It's not hard to find the culture of exploitation in academia. I'd really like to know the numbers on what grad school drop outs go on to do. Even more interesting would be how they're doing in the mental health department.
On a more positive note, I appreciate this article for being a collection of advice for someone considering getting a PhD. More resources like this should be made available to young undergrads still on the educational conveyor belt.
[+] [-] idunning|11 years ago|reply
I'm not saying this doesn't happen, or trying to diminish your personal experience, but you've presented your dark scenario as being as inevitable as the happy scenario you are railing against.
[+] [-] yequalsx|11 years ago|reply
"I bet that at least one of your fellow students will wind up in a psychiatric hospital."
I knew two students in my Ph.D. program in math who ended up in a psychiatric ward.
Full disclosure, I'm ABD in math and quit because I saw no future as a math professor at a research institution. In retrospect my advisor was not a good fit for me either. I wish I had left the program earlier than I did the opportunity cost was indeed quite high.
[+] [-] jake_jakeson|11 years ago|reply
Two close friends that weren't so lucky, now six years later still circling the drains on the psyche ward.
Another close one that gave up literally two weeks before dissertation time never to return, now years later still oscillating between relief and regret daily.
I had it easy with a return tick trip from the normal institution to the mental one, mixed with two periodic strong bouts of insomnia and a thankfully short period where a bottle of crimson red before lunch got the engine going.
Tons of things to add but indeed, it's hard to be anonymous about this sort of stuff.
Several years later I'm still in the state of "glad to have gone through it, yet had I known in advance what it would entail there's not a single chance in hell I'd accept.".
[+] [-] sytelus|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sytelus|11 years ago|reply
So if your choices comes down to getting a job in industry vs doing PHD - there are few advantages for sure but everything you have described seems to apply to both options more or less.
[+] [-] blackkettle|11 years ago|reply
One of the most important lessons I learned was how to spot different kinds of pathological personalities from a distance.
This is a really, really painful - but invaluable - skill to acquire and I am firmly convinced it can only be learned through the school of hardest-knocks.
[+] [-] collyw|11 years ago|reply
While I wouldn't recommend it unless you are really into your field of study (basically I see academia like a ponzi scheme at the moment with far more PhD's than future PI positions). I would say that describing it as having "real risks to your mental and physical health" is a bit over the top. Sure anyone can take their job so seriously that they are stressed out and are damaging their health, but that's not a requirement of doing a PhD and not specific to it either. Plenty of PhDs seem to take things easy around here and most seem to have a decent life until the last year when they have to knuckle down.
[+] [-] emplynx|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cossatot|11 years ago|reply
I did my MS and PhD in geology/geophysics and did a good amount of fieldwork, including 8 international field campaigns in places like the Lesser Antilles and Tibet. It's a cool experience to be 23 and send to Nicaragua with a ton of scientific equipment and run small team for a month or two. There are aspects of it that are like tourism, but you go off the backpacker circuit more and interact with the locals, and actually have inescapable intellectual challenges and responsibilities. It's also a bit less heavy than the Peace Corps.
This is pretty common in the earth sciences, although not required. Lots of people in the social sciences have analogous opportunities.
In any case, I think that the overall discussion in the article and in the comments here provide a good range of possible experiences and considerations. But I just wanted to add my piece because it hasn't been mentioned, and it was what really tipped the scales on going to grad school for me. And that was, for me, a great decision.
I'd also add that anyone with an interest in both earth science and coding will find that if they really learn the 'earth' part of the sciences, there are very many opportunities to use relatively simple computations to make advances that a lot of the field scientists haven't worked through yet, and lots of industry opportunities if you're into that as well.
[+] [-] jvdh|11 years ago|reply
If you are motivated, it is one hell of an experience that you are very unlikely to get anywhere else. This of course depends highly on the group you are joining and the research field that you are going to be in. It is very likely that you get to travel the world and meet interesting new people.
But it is no picknick, and I can confirm some of the other horror stories that you read here. Then again, these made me a better, more focused person.
[+] [-] return0|11 years ago|reply
In my experience the academic world is a closed society of people with similar, often pointless anxieties, an interesting, but quite uniform culture, and often a vague connection with the rest of the universe. I mean, things like publishing, impact factors, tenures and ego-bashing, are things that do not matter in the end, only the science matters, yet many academics' life incessantly revolves around it.
Another place where i have seen a similar "closed world" is the army. People there obsess over mindless pointless things all the time.
I think you should get a PhD because the world is getting richer and you can afford to do this, but make it about learning rather than anything else. If you dont build huge bridges in academia, who cares, you can always join a day job or start your own business. These are exciting times.
[+] [-] danieltillett|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bcantrill|11 years ago|reply
[1] http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/460669.Getting_What_You_C...
[+] [-] danieltillett|11 years ago|reply
I also had some of the best times of my life as Ph.D student (and also some of the worst), but it is not something I have regretted doing for one second since.
[+] [-] reuven|11 years ago|reply
So, why did I do a PhD? I was told that I would learn lots of new things, and meet lots of new people -- and escape, to some degree, the frustration that I was experiencing with my consulting business.
It's true that I met lots new people. And it's true that I learned a ton. And I'm very proud of the research that I did, resulting in a Web site that is used by thousands of researchers and students every week. (The Modeling Commons -- http://modelingcommons.org/, if you're curious.) And I also go to experience a different sort of frustration than I have had when consulting.
And yet, was it worthwhile? I continue to wrestle with that question. My family and I were hugely stressed for more than a decade. Our finances are improving (thanks to my consulting work), but it'll be another year or so before we're back to where we were. I'm frustrated that I didn't create lots of products and businesses during those 11 years.
And the incredible frustration of the PhD process, and of having an advisor who drove me completely and utterly batty, cannot be ignored.
If you want to do research, then you should do a PhD -- but you should know what you're getting into beforehand, and be really sure that you want to do research.
If you don't want to do research, but want to boost your creds, and if you're single and young, then it might be worthwhile.
If you're like me, in your mid-30s, married, with children, and the primary breadwinner, then you should think long and hard about whether you want the PhD. Several of the others who did PhDs mid-career in my program had spouses earning good incomes, didn't have children, or both.
I do believe that having the PhD has already helped to boost my career a bit, helping me to find newer and bigger clients who somehow think that having a PhD makes you smarter or better than the rest of the population.
But would I recommend it to someone else in my position? Not without a lot of thought and consideration. And an understanding that what you think will take 5 years or so might take much longer than that.
[+] [-] lisper|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] noobermin|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] comboy|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chuckcode|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TimJRobinson|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arethuza|11 years ago|reply
I wasn't terribly highly motivated about the PhD work towards the end - the main thing I learned during the process was that I did not want to work in academia. I didn't see much point in a PhD as a general purpose credential and basically used my time for the last 18 months or so getting our company sorted out.
Having said that, academia - particularly post-grads, is a great place to meet people. I met my co-founder through a research project and a couple of other people I knew from there came on-board as early stage employees and worked out really well.
[+] [-] return0|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sbardle|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] geebee|11 years ago|reply
If that person got into an elite Medical, Law, or Business School, they should ask "should I get an MD, JD, or MBA". The reason it's ok to phrase it this way is that attrition rates are typically below one half of one percent in those degree programs at the elite (top 10) level.
Science PhD programs, even elite ones, often have attrition rates at 50%. Engineering is a bit better, at around 35% attrition rates, though this varies by program.
So you should be saying "should I take a 50% shot at getting a PhD" - or, if not, take a very objective look at why the 50% doesn't apply to you. I know, if you got into the PhD program at Berkeley, you justifiably think you're really good at this sort of thing, but really, everyone's good. The 50% who drop or fail out aren't slackers or unintelligent. They're often exceptionally smart and motivated people.
These degrees are very different from professional degrees at the elite level. They are extraordinarily difficult to complete.
On a personal note, I was a PhD student in Industrial Engineering at Berkeley, and I felt there was far too much failure and attrition for such a bright and accomplished group of people. Nobody I knew ended up in an insane asylum (as mentioned in other posts), but it was an emotionally rough experience for many of them, and I could see it getting there. I felt the system did border on being cruel at times.
[+] [-] jckt|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Derbasti|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danieltillett|11 years ago|reply
Edit. Australian degrees are about half way in between the UK and US system. Most candidates take around 4 years.
[+] [-] robdoherty2|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alexalex|11 years ago|reply
However, you also learn why nobody has done it before: because those things take a lot of time. And in a PhD program time is not a limited resource, money is. You will be doing stuff that is a waste of time by any objective measure. You have to be very mindful of the time cost of tasks, work, and your choices, because nobody else is. If you're not careful, a very meaningful period of time will have gone by without a lot to show for.
My advice for people who ask me about getting a PhD is that it is risky entering a PhD program without certainty in what you want to do. You can go to college and figure out what to do. But in a doctoral program, you are too likely to get lost in the system, have a bad experience, waste too much time, and accrue too much opportunity cost. You will regret it if that happens.
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*PhD in a Physics/Engineering program and research work in neuroscience and medicine. My one reccurring nightmare in life is waking up certain that I'm missing a credit, signature, or form and I'm still in graduate school.
[+] [-] red_dazzler|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rrtwo|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] siege_engineer|11 years ago|reply
I wish someone had told me that before I started.